— — o— 


2  1907 


<?;«^,^. 


Division  135  J  555 


;:>eciion 


LITERARY   ILLUSTRATIONS    OF 

THE  BIBLE 

Edited  by  James  Moifatt,  D.D. 


THE    BOOK    OF 
DANIEL 


LITERARY    ILLUSTRATIONS 
OF   THE   BIBLE 

EDITED  BY  JAMES  MOFFATT,  D.D. 

The  Book  of  Ecclesiastes 
The  Book  of  Daniel 
The  Gospel  of  Saint  Mark 
The  Gospel  of  Saint  Luke 
The  Epistle  to  the  Romans 
The  Book  of  Revelation 


Edinburgh  :  T.  and  A.  Constable,  Printers  to  His  Majesty 


LITERARY    ILLUSTRATIONS 
OF   THE    BIBLE 

nPHE  materials  for  these  volumes  are  of  two 
kinds.  On  the  one  hand,  I  have  set  down 
passages  of  verse  and  prose  in  which  some  text  of 
this  book  of  the  Bible  has  been  used  or  applied  in 
what  appears  to  be  a  forcible  or  notable  manner. 
Some  of  these  are  drawn  from  history  and  bio- 
graphy, others  from  general  literature.  In  the 
second  place,  I  have  admitted  passages  which 
develop  aptly  and  freshly  not  the  words  but  the 
idea  of  a  Biblical  verse.  It  is  hoped  that  both 
classes  of  illustrations  may  prove  interesting  to 
the  ordinary  reader  by  enriching  the  associations 
and  eliciting  the  significance  of  the  Bible.  Some- 
times the  materials  printed  here  will  serve  as 
lighted  candles  placed  beside  the  text  of  Scrip- 
ture, while  in  other  cases  I  trust  it  is  not  too 

y 


DANIEL 

presumptuous  to  expect  that  the  juxtaposition  of 
text  and  quotation  may  help  to  set  in  motion 
the  minds  of  those  who  have  to  use  the  Bible 
constantly  in  the  work  of  preaching  or  teaching 
throughout  the  Christian  churches. 

JAMES  MOFFATT. 


VJ 


*  Whatever  may  be  thought  of  the  genuineness 
or  authority  of  any  part  of  the  book  of  Daniel,  it 
makes  no  difference  in  my  belief  in  Christianity  ; 
for  Christianity  is  within  a  man,  even  as  he  is  a 
being  gifted  with  reason  ;  it  is  associated  with 
your  mother's  chair,  and  with  the  first  remem- 
bered tones  of  her  blessed  voice. ' 

COLERIDGE. 


DANIEL 

I.  2,6.  Nebuchadnezzar  besieged  Jeru- 
salem, etc. 

*  T  WAS  taken  captive  when  nearly  sixteen 

years  of  age.  I  did  not  know  the  true 
God ;  and  I  was  taken  to  Ireland  in  captivity 
with  so  many  thousand  men,  in  accordance 
with  our  deserts,  because  we  departed  from 
God  and  kept  not  His  precepts.' 

ST.  Patrick's  Confessions. 

I.  8.  But  Daniel  purposed  in  his  heart. 

*  nPHE  strangeness  of  foreign  life  threw  me 

back  into  myself.' 

NEWMAN,  Apologia^  i. 

A  I 


DANIEL  [chap.  i. 

'  T  DWELL  in  Grace's  court, 

Enriched  with  Virtue's  rights  : 
Faith  guides  my  wit !     Love  leads  my  will ! 
Hope,  all  my  mind  delights ! 

Spare  diet  is  my  fare ; 

My  clothes  more  fit  than  fine ! 
I  know  I  feed  and  clothe  a  foe, 

That,  pampered,  would  repine.' 

ROBERT  SOUTHWELL. 

I.   12/.  Give  us  pulse  to  eat  and  water 
to  drink. 

See  Addison's   Spectator  (No.    195),  and 
Dante's  Purgatorio,  xxii.  145. 

I.  21.  And  Daniel  continued  even  unto 
the  first  year  of  king  Cyrus. 

*  \l\  ^^^  failures  lie  in  not  going  on  long 
enough.     I  heard  a  man  in  a  meet- 
ing in  the  country  long  ago  say,  that  one  of 
2 


VER.  2i]  DANIEL 

the  most  encouraging  verses  he  knew  was  a 
verse  of  common  metre  to  this  effect : — 

"  Go  on,  go  on,  go  on,  etc." ' 

JAMES  SMETHAM. 

*  "\  It  rHAT  is  commonly  admired  as  success- 

ful talent  is  far  more  a  firm  realis- 
ing grasp  of  some  great  principle,  and  that 
power  of  developing  it  in  all  directions,  and 
that  nerve  to  abide  faithful  to  it,  which  is 
involved  in  such  a  true  apprehension.' 

NEWMAN. 

II.  23  y^  Thou  hast  made    known   to 
us  the  king's  matter. 

*  r\  MYSTERY,  whence  to  one  man's  hand 

was  given 
Power  over  all  things  of  the  spirit,  and 
might 

3 


DANIEL  [chap.  ii. 

Whereby  the  veil  of  all  the  years  was  riven, 
And  naked  stood  the  secret  soul  of  night.' 

SWINBURNE. 

II.-III.    Nebuchadnezzar's  image. 

See  Keble's  lines  on  '  Monday  in  Whitsun- 
week.' 

II.  33.  The  image  seen  by  the  king. 

*  T  AM  not  one  who  in  the  least  doubts  or 
disputes  the  progress  of  this  century  in 
many  things  useful  to  mankind ;  but  it  seems 
to  me  a  very  dark  sign  respecting  us  that  we 
look  with  so  much  indifference  upon  dis- 
honesty and  cruelty  in  the  pursuit  of  wealth. 
In  the  dream  of  Nebuchadnezzar  it  was  only 
the  feet  that  were  purt  of  iron  and  part  of 
clay;  but  many  of  us  are  now  getting  so 
4 


VER.  33]  DANIEL 

cruel  in  our  avarice,  that  it  seems  as  if,  in  us 
the  heart  were  part  of  iron,  part  of  clay.' 
RUSKIN,  in  The  Two  Paths, 


'  'T^HINE  only  gift  hath  been  the  grave, 

To  those  that  worshipp'd  thee; 
Nor  till  thy  fall  could  mortals  guess 
Ambition  's  less  than  littleness  ! 


Thanks  for  that  lesson — it  will  teach 

To  after-warriors  more 
Than  high  philosophy  can  preach, 

And  vainly  preached  before. 
That  spell  upon  the  minds  of  men 
Breaks  never  to  unite  again. 

That  led  them  to  adore 
These  Pagod  things  of  sabre  sway, 
With  fronts  of  brass  and  feet  of  clay.' 

BYRON 's  Ode  to  Napoleon. 

5 


DANIEL  [chap.  ii. 

*  TN  Nebuchadnezzar's  image,  the  lower  the 
members,  the  coarser  the  metal ;  the 
further  off  the  time,  the  more  unfit.  To-day 
is  the  golden  opportunity,  to-morrow  will  be 
the  silver  season,  next  day  but  the  brazen 
one,  and  so  long  till  at  last  I  shall  come  to 
the  toes  of  clay,  and  be  turned  to  dust. 
Grant  therefore  that  to-day  I  may  hear  thy 
voice.  And  if  this  day  be  obscure  in  the 
calendar,  and  remarkable  in  itself  for  nothing 
else,  give  me  to  make  it  memorable  in  my 
soul,  thereupon,  by  thy  assistance,  beginning 
the  reformation  of  my  life.' 

THOMAS  FULLER. 

II.  40.  The  fourth  kingdom  .  .  ,  shall 
break  in  pieces  and  crush. 

'  TET'S  have  no  more  dominant  races;  we 
don't  want  them  ;  they  only  turn  men 
into  insolent  brutes.'  burne-jones. 

6 


VER.  42-43]  DANIEL 

II.  42-43.  The   toes   of  the  feet  were 
part  of  iron  and  part  of  clay. 

''T^HERE  be  also  two  false  Peaces^  or 
Unities  \  the  one,  when  the  Peace  is 
grounded,  but  upon  an  implicit  ignorance ; 
For  all  Colours  will  agree  in  the  Darke. 
The  other,  when  it  is  peeced  up,  upon  a 
direct  Admission  of  Contraries,  in  Funda- 
mental! Points.  For  Truth  and  Falsehood, 
in  such  things,  are  like  the  Iron  and  Clay  in 
the  toes  of  Nebuchadnezzar s  Image;  They 
may  Cleave,  but  they  will  not  Incorporate.' 

BACON. 

*nrHE    image     that     appeared     to     King 

Nebuchadnezzar  in  a  dream  was  made 

of  gold,  of  silver,  of  iron,  and  of  clay.     The 

idol  of  this  world  differs  from  that  seen  by 

the  Babylonian    monarch  \  for  it  is  all  gold 

7 


DANIEL  [chap.  ii. 

— pure  gold — and  does  not  even  possess  the 
humanity  of  clay.' 

SIR  ARTHUR  HELPS. 

II.  45.  The  stone  brake  in  pieces  the 
iron,  the  brass,  the  clay,  the  silver, 
and  the  gold. 

'  /^^HRIST'S  religion  was  not  a  mere  creed 
or  philosophy.  A  creed  or  a  philo- 
sophy need  not  have  interfered  with  king- 
doms of  this  world,  but  might  have  existed 
under  the  Roman  Empire,  or  under  the 
Persian.  No;  Christ's  kingdom  was  a 
counter  kingdom.  It  occupied  ground;  it 
claimed  to  rule  over  those  whom  hitherto  this 
world's  governments  ruled  over  without  rival ; 
and  if  this  world's  governments  would  not 
themselves  acknowledge  and  submit  to  its 
rule,  and  rule  under  and  according  to  its 
8 


VER.  49]  DANIEL 

laws,  it  "  broke   in   pieces "   those   govern- 
ments.' 


NEWMAN. 


II.  49.  Then  Daniel  requested  of  the 
king,  and  he  set  Shadrach,  Meshach, 
and  Abednego,  over  the  affairs  of  the 
province  of  Babylon. 

T  1  ^HEN  Omar  Khayyam  was  a  pupil  of 
the  Imam  Howaffah  at  Naishapur, 
he  struck  up  a  friendship  with  two  other 
pupils  who  were  of  his  own  age,  Hasam  and 
Nizam.  One  day  they  made  a  covenant 
and  pledge  with  one  another  that  whoever 
should  gain  a  high  position,  should  share  his 
good  fortune  with  his  less  favoured  com- 
panions. The  vow,  it  seems,  was  kept. 
Nizam  became  vizier,  and  did  not  forget  his 
friends,  both  of  whom  received  from  him  or 
through  him  what  they  desired. 
9 


DANIEL  [chap.  ii. 

Daniel  was  in  the  gate  of  the  king. 

*  "DEFORE  I  was  humbled  I  was  like  a 
stone  lying  in  deep  mud  ;  and  He  who 
is  mighty  came,  and  in  His  own  mercy  raised 
me,  and  lifted  me  up,  and  placed  me  on  the 
top  of  the  wall.  .  .  .  And  me — who  am 
detested  by  this  world — He  has  inspired 
beyond  others  (if  indeed  I  be  such),  but  on 
condition  that  with  fear  and  reverence,  and 
without  complaining,  I  should  faithfully 
serve  the  nation  to  which  the  love  of  Christ 
has  transferred  me.' 

sr.  Patrick's  Confessions. 


lO 


CHAP.  III.]  DANIEL 

III.   I.  Nebuchadnezzar  the  king  made 

an  image  of  gold,  whose  height  was 

threescore   cubits,   and  the   breadth 

thereof  six  cubits. 

'  "D  ENTLEY'S  first  year  at  Trinity  is  marked 
by  at  least  one  event  altogether  fortun- 
ate— his  marriage.  At  Bishop  Stillingfleet's 
house  he  had  met  Miss  Joanna  Bernard, 
daughter  of  Sir  John  Bernard,  of  Brampton, 
Huntingdonshire.  "  Being  now  raised  to  a 
station  of  dignity  and  consequence,  he 
succeeded  in  obtaining  the  object  of  his 
affections,"  says  Dr.  Monk — who  refuses  to 
believe  a  story  that  the  engagement  was 
nearly  broken  off  owing  to  a  doubt  expressed 
by  Bentley  with  regard  to  the  authority  of 
the  Book  of  Daniel.  Whiston  has  told  us 
what  this  alleged  doubt  was.  Nebuchad- 
nezzar's golden  image  is  described  as  sixty 
II 


DANIEL  [chap.  hi. 

cubits  high,  and  six  cubits  broad.  Now, 
said  Bentley,  this  is  out  of  all  proportion ; 
it  ought  to  have  been  ten  cubits  broad  at 
least,  "which  made  the  good  lady  weep." 
The  lovers'  difference  was  possibly  arranged 
on  the  basis  suggested  by  Whiston, — that 
the  sixty  cubits  included  the  pedestal.' 

SIR  R.  c.  jebb's  Bentley^  pp.  97,  98. 

III.  7.  All    the   people  fell  down  and 
worshipped  the  golden  image. 

*  T  ^  rHEN  he  was  away  from  his  beloved 
Hanover,  everything  remained  there 
exactly  as  in  the  prince's  presence.  There 
were  eight  hundred  horses  in  the  stables, 
there  was  all  the  apparatus  of  chamberlains, 
court-marshals,  and  equerries  ;  and  court 
assemblies  were  held  every  Saturday,  where 
all  the  nobility  of  Hanover  assembled  at 
12 


VER.  14]  DANIEL 

what  I  can't  but  think  a  fine  and  touching 
ceremony.  A  large  arm-chair  was  placed  in 
the  assembly-room,  and  on  it  the  king's 
portrait.  The  nobility  advanced,  and  made 
a  bow  to  the  arm-chair,  and  to  the  image 
which  Nebuchadnezzar  the  king  had  set  up ; 
and  spoke  under  their  voices  before  the 
august  picture,  just  as  they  would  have 
done  had  the  king  Churfiirst  been  present 
himself.' — Thackeray's  The  Four  Georges; 
'  George  the  Second.' 

III.  \\f.  Is  it  of  set  purpose  that  ye 
worship  not  the  golden  image  which 
I  have  set  up  .'* 

'TirHOM   shall   I  honour,  whom  shall  I 

refuse  to  honour  ?     If  a  man  have 

any  precious  thing   in  him  at  all,  certainly 

13 


DANIEL  [chap.  hi. 

the  most  precious  of  all  the  gifts  he  can  offer 
is  his  approbation,  his  reverence  to  another 
man.  This  is  his  very  soul,  this  fealty  which 
he  swears  to  another :  his  personality  itself, 
with  whatever  it  has  of  eternal  and  divine, 
he  bends  here  in  reverence  before  another. 
Not  lightly  will  a  man  give  this, — if  he  is 
still  a  man.  .  .  .  Will  a  man's  soul  worship 
that,  think  you?  Never;  if  you  fashioned 
him  of  solid  gold,  big  as  Benlomond,  no 
heart  of  a  man  would  ever  look  on  him 
except  with  sorrow  and  despair.  To  the 
flunky  heart  alone  is  he,  was  he,  or  can  he 
at  any  time  be,  a  thing  to  look  upon  with 
upturned  eyes  of  "  transcendent  admiration," 
worship,  or  worthship  so-called.' — carlyle, 
Latter-Day  Pamphlets  :  '  Hudson's  Statue.' 


M 


VER.  8-18]  DANIEL 

III.  14.  Do  not  ye  serve  my  gods? 

'  T  SAW  an  Image  all  of  massie  gold, 

Placed  on  high  upon  an  altare  faire, 
Not  all,    which   did   the    same   from   farre 

beholde. 
Might  worship  it,  and  fall  on  lowest  staire. 
Not  that  great  Idole  might  with  this  com- 

paire. 
To  which  the   Assyrian  tyrant  would   have 

made 
The  holie  brethren  falslie  to  have  praid.' 
SPENSER,  Ruines  of  Time, 

III.  8-18.  Be  it  known  to  thee,  O 
king,  that  we  will  not  serve  thy 
gods. 

*  T_T  ERE  were  they  who  formerly  resolved 

not  to  defile  themselves  with  the  king's 

meat,  and  now  they  as  bravely  resolved  not 

15 


DANIEL  [chap.  hi. 

to  defile  themselves  with  his  gods.  Note — 
a  steadfast,  self-denying  adherence  to  God 
and  duty  in  lesser  instances  will  qualify  and 
prepare  us  for  the  like  in  greater.' 

MATTHEW  HENRY. 


We  will  not. 

*  'T^HE  Reformer's  chief  business  always  is 
to  destroy  falsehood,  to  drag  down  the 
temple  of  imposture,  where  idols  hold  the 
place  of  the  Almighty. 

'  The  growth  of  Christianity  at  the  begin- 
ning was  precisely  this.  The  early  martyrs 
.  .  .  died,  it  cannot  be  too  clearly  remem- 
bered, for  a  negation.  The  last  confession 
before  the  praetor,  the  words  on  which  their 
fate  depended,  were  not,  "We  do  believe," 
but  "We  do  not  believe."  "  We  will  not,  to 
i6 


VER.  24]  DANIEL 

save  our  miserable  lives,  take  a  lie  between 
our  lips,  and  say  we  think  what  we  do  not 
think."' 

FROUDE. 

III.  24.    Did  we    not  cast   three  men 
bound  into  the  midst  of  the  fire  ? 

*'\A/'E   meet   in  joy,    though   we    part   in 

sorrow ; 
We  part  to-night,  but  we  meet  to-morrow. 
Be  it  flood  or  blood  the  path  that 's  trod, 
All  the  same  it  leads  home  to  God ; 
Be  it  furnace-fire  voluminous. 
One  like  God's  son  will  walk  with  us.  .  .  . 

Yet  one  pang  searching  and  sore, 
And  then  Heaven  for  evermore  : 
Yet  one  moment,  awful  and  dark. 
Then  safely  within  the  veil  and  the  Ark ; 

B  17 


DANIEL  [chap.  hi. 

Yet  one  effort,  by  Christ  His  grace, 
Then  Christ  for  ever,  face  to  face.' 

c.  G.  ROSSETTi,  Martyr^s  Song. 

III.  24/  Lo,  I  see  four  men  loose. 

See   Keble's   lines    on   *The   Nineteenth 
Sunday  after  Trinity/ 

III.  24-25.  The  fiery  furnace. 

» \;^EA,  and   as  thought  of  some  departed 
friend 
By  death  or  distance  parted  will  descend, 
Severing  in  crowded  rooms  ablaze  with  light. 
As   by  a  magic  screen,  the   seer  from   the 
sight.  -  .  . 

So  may  the  ear 
Hearing  not  hear, 
18 


VER.  24-25]  DANIEL 

Though    drums    do    roll,    and    pipes    and 

cymbals  ring ; 
So  the  bare  conscience  of  the  better  thing 
Unfelt,  unseen,  unimaged,  all  unknown, 
May  fix  the  entranced  soul  'mid  multitudes 

alone.' 

CLOUGH. 

'/^    HOLY  Lord,  who   with  the  Children 
Three, 
Didst  walk  the  piercing  flame. 
Help,  in   those  trial-hours,  which,    save   to 
Thee, 
I  dare  not  name ; 
Nor  let  these  quivering  eyes  and  sickening 

heart 
Crumble  to  dust  beneath  the  tempter's  dart.' 

NEWMAN. 


19 


DANIEL  [chap.  hi. 

*  T^HAT    Babylon  has  fallen ;  but  there  is 
another  Babylon  which  still  goes  on, 
and   always   will   go    on,    till   Christ   comes 
again  to  judgment.     There  is  the  overwhelm- 
ing and  overawing  spectacle  of  this  world, 
with  its  pomps  and  glories.     Its  look  is  lofty, 
and  it  speaks  great  things,  and  its  vast  array 
is  ever  before  us.     We  cannot  get  away  from 
it.     Go  where  we  will  it  follows  us.     It  is  a 
vision  before  our  minds  if  not  a  sight  before 
our  eyes ;  it  is  the  scene  of  Babylonian  power 
and    greatness    still    going   on,    though    in 
another  form,  and  accommodated  to  every 
age   in  succession.  .  .  .  Men    reject   every- 
where  the   office   of   witnessing   to    Divine 
truth;  they  throw  it  off  as  an   obstacle,  a 
shackle,  and  a  burden,  something  that  stands 
in  their  way,  and  prevents  them  from  being 
friends  with  the  world,  and  from  getting  on 
in  the  world.     They  know  the  truth,  but  will 


20 


VER.  24-25]  DANIEL 

not  witness  to  it.  They  know  that  the  world 
is  transitory,  and  they  act  as  if  it  were  eter- 
nal. .  .  .  Yet  we  may  venture  to  say,  and 
with  certainty,  that  never,  on  any  occasion, 
by  any  one  of  the  humblest  servants  of  God, 
was  this  office  of  witness  to  the  truth  executed 
without  a  reward.  Never  in  this  mixed 
world  did  a  Christian  soul  offer  to  God  the 
sacrifice  of  a  practical  confession  of  Him, 
by  standing  apart  from  the  ways  of  the  world 
— not  accepting  its  voice,  not  yielding  to  its 
spells,  or  being  overawed  by  its  show ;  never 
did  any  one  face  any  measure  of  adversity  or 
gloom,  or  isolation  or  deprivation,  as  the 
consequence  and  penalty  of  bearing  witness 
to  the  truth  and  expressing  that  truth  in 
action,  but  he  had,  like  the  three  witnesses, 
in  that  adversity  a  companion.' 

MOZLEY. 


21 


DANIEL  [chap.  hi. 

III.  25.  Lo,  I  see  four  men  loose, 
walking  in  the  midst  of  the  fire  ;  and 
they  have  no  hurt  ;  and  the  aspect  of 
the  fourth  is  like  the  son  of  God. 

'T^ENNYSON  makes  his  Sir  John  Oldcastle 

cry  out : — 
'  Nay,  I  can  burn,  so  that  the  Lord  of  Ufe 
Be  by  me  in  my  death. 

Those  three  !     The  fourth 
Was  Hke  the  Son  of  God  !     Not  burnt  were 

they. 
On  them  the  smell  of  burning  had  not  past. 
That  was  a  miracle  to  convert  the  king. 
These  Pharisees,  this  Caiaphas- Arundel 
What  miracle  could  turn  ?     He  there  again, 
He  thwarting  their  traditions  of  Himself^ 
He  would  be  found  a  heretic  to  Himself, 
And  damn'd  to  burn  alive. 

So  caught,  I  burn. 
22 


VER.  27]  DANIEL 

Burn  ?  heathen  men  have  borne  as  much  as 

this, 
For  freedom  or  the  sake  of  those  they  loved, 
Or  some  less  cause,  some  cause  far  less  than 

mine; 
For  every  other  cause  is  less  than  mine.' 

III.  27.   The  fire  had  no  power  over 

their  bodies. 

*  "X 1  7HEN  a  child,'  says  Thomas  Fuller,  '  I 
loved  to  look  on  the  pictures  in  the 
Book  of  Martyrs.  I  thought  that  there  the 
martyrs  at  the  stake  seemed  like  the  three 
children  in  the  fiery  furnace,  ever  since  I  had 
known  them  there,  not  one  hair  more  of 
their  head  was  burnt,  nor  any  smell  of  the 
fire  singeing  of  their  clothes.  This  made  me 
think  martyrdom  was  nothing.  But,  oh ! 
though  the  lion  be  painted  fiercer  than  he  is, 

23 


DANIEL  [chap.  hi. 

the  fire  is  far  fiercer  than  it  is  painted.  Thus 
it  is  easy  for  one  to  endure  an  affliction,  as 
he  limns  it  out  in  his  own  fancy,  and  repre- 
sents it  to  himself  but  in  a  bare  speculation. 
But  when  it  is  brought  indeed,  and  laid  home 
to  us,  there  must  be  a  man,  yea,  there  must 
be  God  to  assist  the  man,  to  undergo  it.' 


/^~^OLE   exhorts   Cranmer,   in    Tennyson's 
Queen  Mary  (Act  iv.,  Scene  3) : — 

*  Remember   how  God   made  the  fierce  fire 

seem 
To  those  three  children  like  a  pleasant  dew. 
Remember  too 

The  triumph  of  St.  Andrew  on  his  cross, 
The  patience  of  St.  Lawrence  in  the  fire. 
Thus,  if  thou  call  on  God  and  all  the  saints, 
God  will  beat  down  the  fury  of  the  flame. 
Or  give  thee  saintly  strength  to  undergo.' 

24   . 


CHAP.  IV.]  DANIEL 

IV.  4-5.  And  I  Nebuchadnezzar  was 
at  rest  in  my  house,  and  flourishing 
in  my  palace.  I  saw  a  dream  which 
made  me  afraid. 

*  T3  EMEMBER,'  Mr.  F.  W.  H.  Myers  once 
wrote  to  a  friend,  'that  first  of  all  a 
man  must,  from  the  torpor  of  a  foul  tran- 
quillity, have  his  soul  delivered  unto  war.' 

IV.   19/!  Nebuchadnezzar's  dream. 

*  Then  was  I  as  a  tree 
Whose  boughs  did  bend  with  fruit :  but  in 

one  night, 
A  storm  or  robbery,  call  it  what  you  will, 
Shook  down  my  mellow  hangings,  nay,  my 

leaves. 
And  left  me  bare  to  weather.' 

Belisarius,  in  Cymbeline. 

25 


DANIEL  [chap.  iv. 

IV.  22-30.  Thou  art  grown  and  become 
strong. 

*  /'^AN  we  believe  that  He  whose  words  were 
so  terrible  against  the  pride  of  Egypt 
and  Babylon,  against  that  haughty  insolence 
in  men,  on  which  not  Hebrew  prophets  only, 
but  the  heathen  poets  of  Greece  looked  with 
such  peculiar  and  profound  alarm, — that  He 
will  not  visit  it  on  those  who,  in  their  measure, 
are  responsible  for  its  words  and  temper, 
when  it  takes  possession  of  a  Christian 
nation?  Can  we  doubt  what  His  judgment 
will  one  day  be  on  the  cynical  parade  of 
exclusive  selfishness,  the  cynical  worship  of 
mere  dexterity  and  adroitness,  in  the  sophists 
and  tyrants  of  the  old  heathen  world ;  and 
can  we  doubt  what  He  will  think  when 
Christians,  disciples  of  the  Lord  of  truth  and 
righteousness,  let  themselves  be  dazzled  in 
26 


VER.  27]  DANIEL 

matters  of  right  and  wrong,  by  the  cleverness 
of  intellectual  fence?  .  .  .  We  have  almost 
elevated  pride  to  the  rank  of  a  national 
virtue ;  so  far  from  seeing  any  harm  in  it,  we 
extol  it  as  a  noble  and  admirable  thing.  You 
see  it  unconsciously  revealed  in  the  look 
and  bearing  which  meet  you  constantly  in 
society  and  in  the  streets.  You  see  it  in  that 
tone  of  insolence  which  seems  to  come  so 
naturally  to  many  of  us  in  the  expression  of 
our  disapproval  and  antipathy.' 

R.  W.  CHURCH, 

IV.  27.  Wherefore,  O  king,  break  off 
thine  iniquities  by  shewing  mercy  to 
the  poor, 

'  "pOOR  naked   wretches,  wheresoe'er  you 

are. 
That  bide  the  pelting  of  this  pitiless  storm, 
27 


DANIEL  [chap.  iv. 

How  shall  your  houseless  heads  and  unfed 

sides, 
Your  loop'd  and  window'd  raggedness  defend 

you 
From  seasons  such  as  this  ?     0  1  have  ta'en 
Too  little  care  of  this  !    Take  physic,  pomp ; 
Expose  thyself  to  feel  what  wretches  feel.' 
THE  KING  in  Lear^  Act  iii..  Scene  4. 


'  ^1  rE  can  figure  the  thought  of  Louis  that 
day,  when,  all  royally  caparisoned 
for  hunting,  he  met,  at  some  sudden  turning. 
in  the  wood  of  Senart,  a  ragged  peasant  with 
a  coffin  :  "  For  whom  ?  " — It  was  for  a  poor 
brother  slave,  whom  Majesty  had  sometimes 
noticed  slaving  in  those  quarters.  *'What 
did  he  die  of?"— "Of  hunger":— the  king 
gave  his  steed  the  spur.' 

CARLYLE. 

28 


VER.  30]  DANIEL 

'   A     DECENT  provision  for  the  poor  is  the 
true  test  of  civilisation.' 

DR.  JOHNSON. 

IV.  30.  Is  not  this  great  Babylon 
which  I  have  built  for  the  royal 
dwelling  place,  for  the  glory  of  my 
majesty? 

"T^INGSLEY,  writing  of  Sir  Walter 
Raleigh's  haughty  temper,  observes: 
*  Proud  ?  No  wonder  if  the  man  be  proud  ! 
"Is  not  this  great  Babylon,  which  I  have 
built?"  And  yet  all  the  while  he  has  the 
most  affecting  consciousness  that  all  this  is 
not  God's  will,  but  the  will  of  the  flesh ;  that 
the  house  of  fame  is  not  the  house  of  God  ; 
that  its  floor  is  not  the  rock  of  ages,  but  the 
sea  of  glass  mingled  with  fire,  which  may 
crack  beneath  him  at  any  moment,  and  let 
29 


DANIEL  [chap.  iv. 

the  nether  flame  burst  up.      He  knows  he 
is  Hving  in  a  splendid  lie.' 


TN  the  preface  to  his  Bible  in  Spain, 
Borrow  attributes  Spanish  cruelties  in 
religion  not  to  fanaticism,  but  to  the  way  in 
which  Rome  worked  on  the  predominant 
feeling  of  pride  in  the  Spanish  nature  :  '  It 
was  by  humouring  her  pride  that  she  was 
induced  to  waste  her  precious  blood  and 
treasure  in  Low  Country  wars,  to  launch 
the  Armada^  and  to  many  other  insane 
actions.  Love  of  Rome  had  ever  slight 
influence  over  her  policy ;  but  flattered  by 
the  title  of  Gonfaloniera  of  the  Vicar  of 
Jesus,  and  eager  to  prove  herself  not  un- 
worthy of  the  same,  she  shut  her  eyes,  and 
rushed  upon  her  own  destruction  with  the 
cry  of  "  Charge  Spain."* 
30 


VER.  30-37]  DANIEL 

IV.     30-37.       Nebuchadnezzar's     con- 
fession. 

*  OORROW,  pain,  and  death  are  sweet  to 
whosoever  dares,  instead  of  fighting 
with  or  flying  from  them,  to  draw  near,  to 
examine  closely,  to  inquire  humbly,  into 
their  nature  and  their  function.  He  began 
to  perceive  that  these  three  reputed  enemies, 
hated  and  feared  of  all  men,  are,  after  all, 
the  fashioners  and  teachers  of  humanity; 
to  whom  it  is  given  to  keep  hearts  pure, 
godly,  and  compassionate,  to  purge  away 
the  dross  of  pride,  hardness,  and  arrogance, 
to  break  the  iron  bands  of  ambition,  self- 
love,  and  vanity,  to  purify  by  endurance 
and  by  charity.' 

LUCAS  MALET,  Sir  Richard  Calmady. 


31 


DANIEL  [chap.  iv. 

*  npHE  greatest  obstacle  to  any  improve- 
ment or  change  in  John  Bull's  senti- 
ments just  now  is  the  egregious  vanity  of 
the  beast.  He  has  been  so  plastered  with 
flattery,  that  he  has  become  an  impervious 
mass  of  self-esteem.  Nothing  is  so  difficult 
as  to  alter  the  policy  of  individuals  or  nations 
who  allow  themselves  to  be  persuaded  that 
they  are  the  "  envy  of  surrounding  nations 
and  the  admiration  of  the  world."  Time  and 
adversity  can  alone  operate  in  such  cases.' 
COBDEN,  to  John  Bright,  in  185 1. 

IV.  (25)  37.  They  shall  make  thee  to 
eat  grass  .  .  .  till  thou  know  that  the 
Most  High  ruleth. 

*  'T^HIS  Nebuchadnezzar  curse,  that  sends 
men  to  grass  like  oxen,  seems  to  follow 
but  too  closely  on  the  excess  or  continuance 
32 


VER.  (25)  37]  DANIEL 

of  national  power  and  peace.  In  the  per- 
plexities of  nations,  in  their  struggle  for 
existence,  in  their  infancy,  their  impotence, 
or  even  their  disorganisation,  they  have 
higher  hopes  and  nobler  passions.  Out  of 
the  suffering  comes  the  serious  mind ;  out 
of  the  salvation,  the  grateful  heart ;  out  of 
endurance,  fortitude ;  out  of  deliverance 
faith.' 

RUSKIN,  Modern  Painters, 

*  T  FOUND  occasion  at  this  time  to  con- 
clude, that  the  Unto  of  our  river  fords 
secretes  pearls  so  much  more  frequently  than 
the  Unionidce  and  Anadonta  of  our  still  pools 
and  lakes,  not  from  any  specific  peculiarity 
in  the  constitution  of  the  creature,  but  from 
the  effects  of  the  habitat  which  it  is  its  nature 
to  choose.  It  receives  in  the  fords  and 
shallows  of  a  rapid  river  many  a  rough 
c  33 


DANIEL  [chap.  iv. 

blow  from  sticks  and  pebbles  carried  down 
in  times  of  flood,  and  occasionally  from  the 
feet  of  men  and  animals  that  cross  the 
stream  during  droughts ;  and  the  blows 
induce  the  morbid  secretions  of  which 
pearls  are  the  result.  There  seems  to  exist 
no  inherent  cause  why  Anadon  cygnea^  with 
its  beautiful  silvery  nacre — as  bright  often, 
and  always  more  delicate  than  that  of  Unio 
margaritiferus — should  not  be  equally  pro- 
ductive of  pearls ;  but,  secure  from  violence 
in  its  still  pools  and  lakes,  it  does  not  pro- 
duce a  single  pearl  for  a  hundred  that  are 
ripened  into  value  and  beauty  by  the  exposed 
current- tossed  Unionidcz  of  our  rapid 
mountain  rivers.  Would  that  hardship  and 
suffering  bore  always  in  a  creature  of  a 
greatly  higher  family  similar  results,  and 
that  the  hard  buffets  dealt  him  by  fortune 
in  the  rough  stream  of  life  could  be  trans- 

34 


VER.  37]  DANIEL 

muted,  by  some  blessed  internal  predisposi- 
tion of  his  nature,  into  pearls  of  great  price.' — 
HUGH  MILLER,  My  Schools  and  Schoolmasters, 

IV.  37.  I   Nebuchadnezzar. 

*  "PXPRESS   confessions   give  definiteness 

to   memories   that  might  more  easily 
melt  away  without  them.' 

GEORGE  ELIOT. 

V.  I .  Belshazzar  the  king  made  a  great 
feast. 

*  pOMP,  in  our  apprehension,  was  an  idea 

of  two  categories;  the  pompous  might 
be  spurious,  but  it  might  also  be  genuine. 
It  is  well  to  love  the  simple — we  love  it; 
nor  is  there  any  opposition  at  all  between 
that  and  the  very  glory  of  pomp.  But,  as 
we  once  put  the  case  to  Lamb,  if,  as  a 
musician,  as  the  leader  of  a  mighty 
35 


DANIEL  [chap.  v. 

orchestra,  you  had  this  theme  offered  to 
you  —  "Belshazzar  the  king  gave  a  great 
feast  to  a  thousand  of  his  lords" —  .  .  . 
surely  no  man  would  deny  that,  in  such 
a  case,  simplicity,  though  in  a  passive  sense 
not  lawfully  absent,  must  stand  aside  as 
totally  insufficient  for  the  positive  part. 
Simplicity  might  guide,  even  here,  but  could 
not  furnish  the  power ;  a  rudder  it  might  be, 
but  not  an  oar  or  a  sail.' 

DE  QuiNCEY,  on  Charles  Lamb. 

See  Byron's  Hebrew  Melodies^  '  The  Vision 
of  Belshazzar.* 

V.  2  f,  A  great  feast. 

*  TF  men  love  the  pleasure  of  eating,  if  they 

allow  themselves  to  love  this  pleasure,  if 

they  find  it  good,  there  is  no  limit  to  the 

augmentation  of  the  pleasure,  no  limit  be- 

36 


VER.  1-17]  DANIEL 

yond  which  it  may  not  grow.  The  satisfac- 
tion of  a  need  has  limits,  but  pleasure  has 
none.  .  .  .  And,  strange  to  say,  men  who 
daily  overeat  themselves  at  such  dinners — in 
comparison  with  which  the  feast  of  Bel- 
shazzar,  that  evoked  the  prophetic  warning, 
was  as  nothing — are  naively  persuaded  that 
they  may  yet  be  leading  a  moral  life.' 

TOLSTOY. 

V.   I- 1 7.  Then  was   the    king   greatly 
troubled. 

*  "pROM  the  words  of  Daniel  it  appears  that 
Belshazzar  had  made  a  great  feast  to  a 
thousand  of  his  lords,  and  drank  wine  before 
the  thousand.  The  golden  and  silver  vessels 
are  gorgeously  enumerated,  with  the  princes, 
the  king's  concubines,  and  his  wives.  Then 
follows — "  In  the  same  hour  came  forth 
fingers  of  a  man's  hand,  and  wrote  over 
37 


DANIEL  [chap.  v. 

against  the  candlestick  upon  the  plaster  of 
the  wall  of  the  king's  palace ;  and  the  king 
saw  the  part  of  the  hand  that  wrote.  Then 
the  king's  countenance  was  changed,  and  his 
thoughts  troubled  him,  so  that  the  joints  of 
his  loins  were  loosened,  and  his  knees  smote 
one  against  another."  This  is  the  plain  text. 
By  no  hint  can  it  be  otherwise  inferred,  but 
that  the  appearance  was  solely  confined  to 
the  fancy  of  Belshazzar,  that  his  single  brain 
was  troubled.  Not  a  word  is  spoken  of  its 
being  seen  by  any  one  else  there  present,  not 
even  by  the  queen  herself,  who  merely  under- 
takes for  the  interpretation  of  the  phenomena 
as  related  to  her,  doubtless,  by  her  husband. 
The  lords  are  simply  said  to  be  astonished, 
i.e.  at  the  trouble  and  change  of  countenance 
in  their  sovereign.  Even  the  prophet  does 
not  appear  to  have  seen  the  scroll  which  the 
king  saw.  He  recalls  it  only.  He  speaks  of 
38 


VER.  25]  DANIEL 

the  phantom  as  past.' — From  Charles 
lamb's  essay  on  The  Barren7iess  of  the 
Imaginative  Faculty  in  the  Productions  of 
Modern  Art. 

V.  22.  Thou  hast  not  humbled  thine 
heart. 
nPHE  late  Mr.  F.  W.  H.  Myers,  speaking 
of  his  early  passion  for  the  classics, 
confesses  that  they  '  were  but  intensifications 
of  my  own  being.  They  drew  from  me  and 
fostered  evil  as  well  as  good ;  they  might  aid 
imaginative  impulse  and  detachment  from 
sordid  interests,  but  they  had  no  check  for 
pride.' 

V.  25/  Mene,  Mene,  Tekel,  Upharsin. 

TN    describing   the    squalor    of   Vauxhall 

Walk,  Lambeth,  Wilkie  Collins  observes 

that  '  in  this  district,  as   in  other  districts 

39 


DANIEL  [chap.  v. 

remote  from  the  wealthy  quarters  of  the 
metropolis,  the  hideous  London  vagabond — 
with  the  filth  of  the  street  outmatched  in  his 
talk,  with  the  mud  of  the  street  out-dirtied 
in  his  clothes — lounges,  lowering  and  brutal, 
at  the  street  corner  and  the  gin-shop  door; 
the  public  disgrace  of  his  country,  the  un- 
heeded warning  of  social  troubles  that  are 
yet  to  come.  Here  the  loud  assertion  of 
Modern  Progress — which  has  reformed  so 
much  in  manners,  and  altered  so  little  in 
man — meets  the  flat  contradiction  that 
scatters  its  pretensions  to  the  wands.  Here, 
while  the  national  prosperity  feasts,  like 
another  Belshazzar,  on  the  spectacle  of  its 
own  magnificence,  is  the  writing  on  the  wall, 
which  warns  the  monarchy  Money,  that  his 
glory  is  weighed  in  the  balance,  and  his  power 
found  wanting.' 

From  No  Name,  Scene  iii.  i. 
40 


VER.  25]  DANIEL 

in\ESCRIBING  the  later  days  of  Raleigh's 
career  at  Court,  Kingsley  sums  up  the 
tale  of  his  fopperies  with  the  words  :  '  But 
enough  of  these  toys,  while  God's  hand- 
writing is  on  the  wall  above  all  heads. 
Raleigh  knows  the  handwriting  is  there.  .  .  . 
Tragic  enough  are  the  after-scenes  of  Raleigh's 
life ;  but  most  tragic  of  all  are  these  scenes 
of  vain-glory,  in  which  he  sees  the  better 
part,  and  yet  chooses  the  worse,  and  pours  out 
his  self-discontent  in  song  which  proves  the 
fountain  of  delicacy  and  beauty  which  lies 
pure  and  bright  beneath  the  gaudy,  artificial 
crust.  What  might  not  this  man  have  been  ! 
And  he  knows  that  too.  .  .  .  Anything  to 
forget  the  handwriting  on  the  wall,  which  will 
not  be  forgotten.' 


41 


DANIEL  [chap.  v. 

V.  27.  Tekel  :  Thou  art  weighed  in  the 
balances,  and  art  found  wantingf. 
TN  the  Spectator  (No.  463)  Addison  de- 
scribes a  dream  of  a  pair  of  golden 
scales  which  showed  the  exact  value  of 
everything  that  is  in  esteem  among  men. 
Among  the  experiments  which  he  made  with 
this  balance  was  the  following  :  '  Having  an 
opportunity  of  this  nature  in  my  Hands,  I 
could  not  forbear  throwing  into  one  scale  the 
Principles  of  a  Tory,  and  into  the  other  those 
of  a  Whig ;  but  as  I  have  all  along  declared 
this  to  be  a  Neutral  Paper,  I  shall  likewise 
desire  to  be  silent  under  this  Head,  also, 
though  upon  examining  one  of  the  weights, 
I  saw  the  word  tekel  engraved  on  it  in 
Capital  Letters.' 

T  N  his  Bible  in  Spain  Borrow  describes  his 
feelings  when  he  boldly  opened  a  shop  in 
42 


VER.  27]  DANIEL 

Madrid  for  the  sale  of  Testaments.  *  "  How 
strangely  times  alter,"  said  I,  the  second  day 
subsequent  to  the  opening  of  my  establish- 
ment, as  I  stood  on  the  opposite  side  of  the 
street,  surveying  my  shop,  on  the  windows  of 
which  were  painted  in  large  yellow  characters, 
Despacho  de  la  Sociedad  Biblica  y  Estrangera ; 
"how  strangely  times  alter.  .  .  .  Pope  of 
Rome  !  Pope  of  Rome !  look  to  thyself. 
That  shop  may  be  closed ;  but  oh !  what  a 
sign  of  the  times,  that  it  has  been  permitted 
to  exist  for  one  day.  It  appears  to  me,  my 
Father,  that  the  days  of  your  sway  are  num- 
bered in  Spain ;  that  you  will  not  be  per- 
mitted much  longer  to  plunder  her,  to  scoff 
at  her,  and  to  scourge  her  with  scorpions,  as 
in  bygone  periods.  See  I  not  the  hand  on 
the  wall?  See  I  not  in  yonder  letters  a 
Mene,  Mene,  Tekel^  Upharsin}  Look  to 
thyself,  Batushca.'" 

43 


DANIEL  [chap.  v. 

'  jWr  ARGOT,  in  the  Fifth  Act   of  Tenny- 
son's Harold,  exclaims : — 

'  Mock-king,  I  am  the  messenger  of  God, 
His  Norman  Daniel !  Mene,  Mene,  Tekel ! 
Is  thy  wrath  Hell,  that  I  should  spare  to  cry, 
Yon  heaven  is  wroth  with  thee  ? ' 


V.  30  (cf.  28).  Thy  kingdom  is  divided. 
...  In    that    night    Belshazzar   was 

slain. 

'Canst  thou  discern 
The  signs  of  seasons,  yet  perceive  no  hint 
Of  change  in  that  stage  scene  in  which  thou 

art 
Not  a  spectator,  but  an  actor  ?  or 
Art  thou  a  puppet  moved  by  enginery  ? 
The  day  that  dawns  in  fire  will  die  in  storms, 
Even  though  the  noon  be  calm.' 

SHELLEY. 

44 


VER.  30-31]  DANIEL 

V.  30-31.     Belshazzar   was   slain,  and 
Darius  the  Mede  took  the  kinofdom. 

*  "ly'INGS  and  Emperors  have  long  ago 
arranged  for  themselves  a  system  like 
that  of  a  magazine-rifle :  as  soon  as  one 
bullet  has  been  discharged,  another  takes  its 
place.  Le  rot  est  mort,  vive  le  roi  !  So  what 
is  the  use  of  kiUing  them  ? ' 

TOLSTOY. 

VI.  3-4.  An  excellent  spirit  was  in  him, 
etc. 

'  AITHATEVER  the  world  thinks,  he  who 
hath  not  much  meditated  upon  God, 
the  human  soul,  and  the  summum  bonum, 
may  possibly  make  a  thriving  earthworm, 
but  will  most  indubitably  make  a  sorry 
patriot  and  a  sorry  statesman.' 

BERKELEY. 

45 


DANIEL  [chap.  vi. 

VI.  4.  Forasmuch  as  he  was  faithful. 

*  T^HAT  we  have  little  faith  is  not  sad,  but 
that  we  have  but  little  faithfulness. 
By  faithfulness  faith  is  earned.  When,  in 
the  progress  of  a  life,  a  man  swerves,  though 
only  by  an  angle  infinitely  small,  from  his 
proper  and  allotted  path  (and  this  is  never 
done  quite  unconsciously  even  at  first;  in 
fact  that  was  his  broad  and  scarlet  sin — oh, 
he  knew  of  it  more  than  he  can  tell),  then  the 
drama  of  his  life  turns  to  tragedy,  and  makes 
haste  to  its  fifth  act.' 

THOREAU'S  Letters, 

'  A  ^ yE  have  more  sneakers  after  Ministerial 

favour,'  wrote  SirWalter  Scott  in  1826, 

*■  than  men  who  love  their  country  and  who 

upon  a  liberal  scale  would  serve  their  party.' 


46 


CHAP.  VII.]  DANIEL 

VII.  \f.   And  four  great  beasts  came 
up  from  the  sea 

*  T  AM  amusing  myself  with  thinking  of  the 
prophecy  of  Daniel  as  a  sort  of  allegory. 
All  those  monstrous,  "  rombustical "  beasts 
with  their  horns — the  horn  with  eyes  and  a 
mouth  speaking  proud  things,  and  the  little 
horn  that  waxed  rebellious  and  stamped  on 
the  stars,  seem  like  my  passions  and  vain 
fancies,  which  are  to  be  knocked  down  one  after 
another — until  all  is  subdued  with  a  universal 
kingdom  over  which  the  Ancient  of  Days 
presides — the  spirit  of  Love — the  Catholicism 
of  the  universe — if  you  can  attach  any  mean- 
ing to  such  a  phrase.' 

GEORGE  ELIOT  to  Sara  Hennell. 

VII.  lo.  The  books  were  opened. 

r^OMPARE  the  reference  in  Tennyson's 
Sea  Dreams,  and  this  rabbinic  saying : 
47 


DANIEL  [chap.  vii. 

'Consider  three  things,  and  thou  wilt  not 
fall  into  the  hands  of  transgression  : — know 
what  is  above  thee,  a  seeing  eye,  a  hearing 
ear,  and  all  thy  deeds  written  in  a  book.' 

VII.  12/]  The  reign  of  one  like  the  Son 
of  Man. 

*  T)  Y  resigning  his  strength,  by  declining  to 
appeal  to  force,  by  committing  himself 
into  God's  hand,  Jesus  took  the  direct  path 
to  supreme  power  and  universal  dominion. 
Such  is  the  honour  which  he  felt  to  be  owing 
to  the  kingdom  of  the  Truth,  to  leave  it  to 
win  its  own  way  against  the  suffrages  of  all 
men.  "  He  must  reign  .  .  ."  Christ  steals 
on  and  on  in  the  world  of  human  thought, 
and  the  enmity  of  one  age  falls  before  him  in 
the  next.  "  Every  battle  (among  men)  is 
with  confused  noise  and  garments  rolled  in 
blood " ;  but  after  quite  another  manner 
48 


VER.  12]  DANIEL 

God  is  bringing  about  the  unification  of  all 
nations  under  Christ.  Truth's  battle  which 
is  Love's  success,  steals  on,  like  some  sweet 
mystic   fire   which    "subdues   all   things   to 

itself."'  DR.  JOHN  PULSFORD. 

VIII.  2.   I  was  in  the  palace  .  .  .  and 
I  saw  in  the  vision. 


E 


VEN  in  a  palace  life  may  be  lived  well' 

MARCUS  AURELIUS. 

See  M.  Arnold's  Sonnet,  Worldly  Place. 


I  was  by  the  river  Ulai. 

T  N  his  Remarkable  Passages  of  the  Life  and 
Death  of  Mr.  John  Semple,  minister  of 
Carsphairn  in  Galloway,  Patrick  Walker  tells 
how  'that  night  after  his  wife  died,  he  spent 
the  whole  ensuing  night  in  prayer  and  medita- 
tion in  his  garden.  The  next  morning,  one 
of  his  elders  coming  to  see  him,  and  lament- 
D  49 


DANIEL  [chap.  viii. 

ing  his  great  loss  and  want  of  rest,  he 
replied  :  "  I  declare  I  have  not,  all  night,  had 
one  thought  of  the  death  of  my  wife,  I  have 
been  so  taken  up  in  meditating  on  heavenly 
things.  I  have  been  this  night  on  the  banks 
of  Ulai,  plucking  an  apple  here  and  there." ' 

VIII.  3/,  7/   The   pageant   of  the 
beast  empires. 

*  A  S  I  gazed  out  into  vacancy,  the  grey 
masses  began  to  move,  to  wave  to  and 
fro;  it  seemed  as  if  the  wind  swept  heavy 
veils  away,  and  suddenly  there  lay  disclosed 
right  before  me  a  sheet  of  cold,  dark  northern 
sea.  A  rock  rose  out  of  it,  snow-covered, 
and  carrying  on  its  crags  long  icicles,  which 
hung  down  to  the  sinister-looking  water. 
On  the  top  of  the  rock  sat  a  huge  polar  bear ; 
his  paws  were  holding  the  carcass  of  the  last 
animal  he  had  found  in  this  wilderness,  and 
50 


VER.  3,  7]  DANIEL 

he  looked  triumphantly  around  as  if  to  say, 
"Now  am  I  sole  lord  of  the  world."  But 
already  the  black  waters  moved  and  gurgled, 
and  out  of  them  arose  the  shining  body  and 
the  huge  fins  of  a  snake-like  monster ;  his 
walrus  head  carried  a  real  mane,  and  from 
his  mouth  hung  seaweed  and  the  remnants 
of  some  small  fish — the  last  he  had  found  in 
the  sea.  His  glassy,  greenish  eyes  stared 
about,  and  they  also  seemed  to  say,  "Now 
am  I  quite  alone,  master  of  the  world."  But 
suddenly  the  huge  white  bear  and  the  sea 
monster  caught  sight  of  each  other;  the 
enormous  fins  beat  the  waves,  the  cruel  paws 
clawed  at  the  rock.  Both  were  yet  gorged 
with  food,  but  already  they  were  measuring 
one  another  with  angry  looks  like  future 
adversaries.  They  had  devastated  the  whole 
world,  and  now  they  met  in  this  deso- 
late waste    for    the    ultimate    fight.  ...  I 

SI 


DANIEL  [chap.  viii. 

believe  that  for  a  moment  the  clouds  which 
ever  surround  us  had  lifted,  allowing  me 
to  catch  a  glimpse  of  the  history  of  the 
world ;  which  often  is  a  history  of  wild 
beasts.'  —  From  The  Letters  Which  Never 
Reached  Him, 

Compare  the  closing  paragraphs  of  Victor 
Hugo's  Shakespeare. 

VIII.  27.   I    was     astonished    at    the 
vision,  but  none  understood  it. 

*  r~^  REAT  position  often  invests  men  with  a 

second  sight  whose  visions  they  lock 
up  in  silence,  content  with  the  work  of  the 
day.' 

JOHN  MORLEY. 

*  TT E  dreamed  a  dream  so  luminous, 

He  woke  (he  says)  convinced ;   but 
what  it  taught 

52 


VER.  27]  DANIEL 

Wirhholds    as    yet.     Perhaps   those    graver 

shades 
Admonished  him  that  visions  told  in  haste 
Part  with  their  virtues  to  the  squandering  Hps, 
And  leave  the  soul  in  wider  emptiness.' 

GEORGE  ELIOT. 

VIII.  2^,  I  Daniel  fainted  and  was  sick 
certain  days,  then  I  rose  up  and  did 
the  king's  business. 

*  nPHERE  'S  many  a  good  bit  of  work  done 

with  a  sad  heart.' 

GEORGE  eliot's  Adam  Bede. 

IX.  2.   I  understood  by  the  books. 

*  "POR  if  I  write,  paint,  carve,  a  word  indeed 

On  book  or  board  or  dust,  on  floor  or 
wall, 

53 


DANIEL  [chap  ix. 

The  same  is  kept  of  God,  who  taketh  heed 

That  not  a  letter  of  the  meaning  fall 
Or  ere  it  touch  and  teach  the  world's  deep 
heart.' 

E.  B.  BROWNING. 

IX.  3.  With  fasting. 

'  TOASTING  is  an  indispensable  condition 
of  a  good  life;  but  in  fasting,  as  in 
self-control  in  general,  the  question  arises, 
With  what  shall  we  begin? — How  to  fast, 
how  often  to  eat,  what  to  eat,  what  to  avoid 
eating  ?  And  as  we  can  do  no  work  seriously 
without  regarding  the  necessary  order  of 
sequence,  so  also  we  cannot  fast  without 
knowing  where  to  begin — with  what  to  com- 
mence self-control  in  food.  Fasting!  and 
even  an  analysis  of  how  to  fast,  and  where  to 
begin — the  very  notion  of  it  sounds  ridiculous 
54 


VER.  4]  DANIEL 

and  wild  to  most  men.  I  remember  how, 
with  pride  at  his  originality,  an  evangelical 
preacher,  who  was  attacking  monastic 
asceticism,  once  said  to  me,  "  Ours  is  not  a 
Christianity  of  fasting  and  privations,  but  of 
beefsteaks  "  * 

TOLSTOY. 

IX.  4.  O  Lord,  the  great  and  dreadful 
God,  which  keepeth  covenant  and 
mercy. 

*  'X'HE  attractive  aspects  of  God's  character 
must  not  be  made  more  apparent  to 
such  a  being  as  man  than  His  chastening  and 
severer  aspects.  We  must  not  be  invited  to 
approach  the  Holy  of  Holies  without  being 
made  aware,  painfully  aware,  of  what  Holi- 
ness is.  We  must  know  our  own  unworthi- 
ness  ere  we  are  fit  to  approach  or  imagine  an 
55 


DANIEL  [chap.  ix. 

Infinite  Perfection.  The  most  nauseous  of 
false  religions  is  that  which  affects  a  fulsome 
fondness  for  a  Being  not  to  be  thought  of 
without  awe,  or  spoken  of  without  reluctance.' 

BAGEHOT. 

IX.  4 /i  We  have  sinned. 

'  T7OR  God  is  at  hand,  and  the  Most  High 
rules  in  the  children  of  men.  .  .  .  The 
same  light  which  lets  you  see  sin  and  trans- 
gression, will  let  you  see  the  covenant  of 
God,  which  blots  out  your  sin  and  transgres- 
sion, which  gives  victory  and  dominion  over 
it,  and  brings  into  covenant  with  God.  For 
looking  down  at  sin  and  corruption  and  dis- 
traction, ye  are  swallowed  up  in  it ;  but  look- 
ing at  the  light,  which  discovers  them,  ye 
will  see  over  them.' 

GEORGE  FOX  to  Lady  Claypole. 


56 


VER.  5]  DANIEL 

IX.   5.    We    have    sinned    and    have 
dealt  perversely. 

'  I  HAVE  told, 

O  Britons,  O  my  brethren,  I  have  told 
Most  bitter  truth,  but  without  bitterness. 
Nor  deem  my  zeal  or  factious  or  mistimed ; 
For  never  can  true  courage  dwell  with  them, 
Who,  playing  tricks  with    conscience,   dare 

not  look 
At   their   own   vices.     We   have   been    too 

long 
Dupes  of  a  deep  delusion  !     Some,  belike. 
Groaning  with  restless  enmity,  expect 
All     change    from    change    of    constituted 

power ; 
As  if  a  government  had  been  a  robe. 
On  which  our  vice  and  wretchedness  were 

tagged 
Like  fancy-points  and  fringes,  with  the  robe 

57 


DANIEL  [chap.  ix. 

Pulled  off  at  pleasure.  .  .  .  Others   mean- 
while, 
Dote  with  a  mad  idolatry ;  and  all 
Who  will  not  fall  before  their  images 
And  yield  them  worship,  they  are  enemies 
Even  of  their  c  juntry  ! ' 

COLERIDGE,  J^ears  in  Solitude. 

IX.  20.  And  whiles  I  was  .  .  .  confess- 
ing my  sin  and  the  sin  of  my  people 
Israel. 

See  Miss  Rossetti's  lines,  'By  the  Waters  of 
Babylon.' 

My  sin  and  the  sin  of  my  people. 

*  ir\0  you  know,  when  I  see  a  poor  devil 

drunk  and  brutal,  I  always  feel,  quite 

apart  from  my  sesthetical  perceptions,  a  sort 

of  shame,  as   if  I  myself  had  some    hand 

in  it.' 

W.  MORRIS. 

58 


VER.  20]  DANIEL 

*  1V[  O  man's  thoughts  ever  fell  more  into  the 
forms  of  a  kind  of  litany  than  Mr. 
Maurice's.  .  .  .  They  were  the  confessions 
befitting  a  kind  of  litany,  poured  forth  in  the 
name  of  human  nature,  the  weakness  and 
sinfulness  of  which  he  felt  most  keenly,  most 
painfully,  but  which  he  felt  at  least  as  much 
in  the  character  of  the  representative  of  a 
race  by  the  infirmities  of  which  he  was  over- 
whelmed, as  on  his  own  account.  .  .  .  When- 
ever you  catch  that  he  feels— as  all  the  deeper 
religious  natures  have  always  felt — a  sort 
of  self-reproachful  complicity  in  every  sinful 
tendency  of  his  age,  you  feel  that  the  litany 
in  which  he  expresses  his  shame  is  not  so 
much  morbid  self-depreciation  as  a  deep 
sense  of  the  cruel  burden  of  social  infirmity 
and  social  sin.* 

R.  H.  HUTTON. 


59 


DANIEL  [chap.  ix. 

*  'T^homas     Boston     of     Ettrick,     in     his 

Memoirs^  mentions  the  scandal  caused 
by  a  local  minister  having  been  guilty  of 
adultery.  '  I  well  know/  he  adds,  '  that 
many  a  heavy  heart  it  made  to  me,  and  re- 
member the  place  where  I  was  wont  heavily 
to  lament  it  before  the  Lord  in  secret  prayer.' 

IX.  23.  At  the  beginning  of  thy  suppli- 
cations the  commandment  cam^  forth. 

*  "P  EMEMBER  the   rebuke  which  I  once 

got  from  old  Mr.  Dempster  of  Denny, 
after  preaching  to  his  people  :  "  I  was  highly 
pleased  with  your  discourse,  but  in  prayer  it 
struck  me  that  you  thought  God  unwilling  to 
give.^^  Remember  Daniel:  "At  the  begin- 
ning of  thy  supplications  the  commandment 
came  forth." ' 

m'cheyne  to  Bonar. 
60 


VER.  24]  DANIEL 

IX.   2'^f,  Consider  the  vision. 

See   Keble's  lines   on  '  Thursday   before 
Easter.' 

IX.  24.  To  bring  in  everlasting  right- 
eousness. 

*  IVTOT  long  after  Phryne's  religious  per- 
formance at  Eleusis  came  the  last 
days,  too,  of  the  national  life  of  the  Jews, 
under  the  successors  of  Alexander.  The 
religious  conceptions  of  the  Jews  of  those 
days  are  well  given  by  the  Book  of  Daniel. 
How  popular  and  prevalent  these  concep- 
tions were  is  proved  by  their  vitality  and 
power  some  two  centuries  later  at  the  Chris- 
tian era,  and  by  the  large  place  which  they 
fill  in  the  New  Testament.  We  are  all 
familiar  with  them ;  with  their  turbid  and 
austere  visions  of  the  Ancient  of  Days  on  his 
throne,  and  the  Son  of  Man  coming  with  the 
61 


DANIEL  [chap.  x. 

clouds  of  heaven  to  give  the  kingdom  to  the 
saints  of  the  Most  High  and  to  bring  in 
everlasting  righteousness.  Here,  then,  is  the 
last  word  of  the  religion  of  the  Hebrews, 
when  their  national  life  is  drawing  to  an  end, 
when  their  career  has  been,  for  the  most 
part,  run ;  when  their  religion  has  had  nearly 
all  the  development  which,  within  the  limits 
of  their  national  life,  belonged  to  it.  This, 
we  say,  is  its  last  word  :  To  bring  in  everlast- 
ing righteousness. ' 

MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

See,  further.  Literature  and  Dogma,  iii. 
ad  init. 

X.   I  y!  Even  a  great  warfare. 

*  'T'HEN  suddenly  would  come  a  dream  of 

far  different   character — a  tumultuous 

dream — commencing  with  a  music  such  as 

now  I  often  heard  in  sleep — music  of  pre- 

62 


VER.  i]  DANIEL 

paration  and  of  awakening  suspense.  The 
morning  was  come  of  a  mighty  day — a  day 
of  crisis  and  of  ultimate  hope  for  human 
nature,  then  suffering  mysterious  echpse,  and 
labouring  in  some  dread  extremity.  Some- 
where, but  I  knew  not  where — somehow,  but 
I  knew  not  how — by  some  beings,  but  I  knew 
not  by  whom — a  battle,  a  strife,  an  agony, 
was  travelling  through  all  its  stages — was 
evolving  itself,  like  the  catastrophe  of  some 
mighty  drama,  with  which  my  sympathy  was 
the  more  insupportable,  from  deepening 
confusion  as  to  its  local  scene,  its  cause, 
its  nature,  and  its  undecipherable  issue. 
.  .  .  Some  greater  interest  was  at  stake, 
some  mightier  cause,  than  ever  yet  the  sword 
had  pleaded,  or  trumpet  had  proclaimed. 
Then  came  sudden  alarms ;  hurryings  to  and 
fro,  trepidations  of  innumerable  fugitives; 
I  knew  not  whether  from  the  good  cause  or 
63 


DANIEL  [chap.  x. 

the  bad ;  darkness  and  lights ;  tempest  and 
human  faces.' — de  quincey,  Confessions  of 
an  English  Opium-Eater. 

X.  8.  So  I  was  left  alone,  and  saw  this 

great  vision. 

*  'T^HIN,  thin  the   pleasant   human    noises 
grow, 
And  faint  the  city  gleams ; 
Rare   the   lone    pastoral   huts — marvel   not 

thou! 
The  solemn  peaks  but  to  the  stars  are  known, 
But  to  the  stars,  and  the  cold  lunar  beams ; 
Alone  the  sun  arises,  and  alone 
Spring  the  great  streams.' 

M.  ARNOLD. 

'  TT  takes  solitude  to  get  yourself  saturated 
by    any    thought^    and    to    the    great 
majority  of  men  even  solitude  will  not  effect 
64 


VER.  ii]  DANIEL 

it,  but  only  lower  their  thinking  power  to 
the  congealing  point.  Nevertheless,  as  Mr. 
Darwin  saw  in  relation  to  the  growth  and 
decay  of  species,  the  very  condition  which 
kills  out  a  weak  thinking  power,  feeds  and 
elevates  to  the  glowing  point  a  strong  think- 
ing power.  .  .  .  Till  the  life  of  a  thought 
becomes  identical  with  the  life  of  an  emotion, 
it  will  never  really  dominate  the  minds  of 
men.  And  so  far  as  I  can  judge  by  history, 
this  result  is  never  attained  for  thought, 
without  long,  solitary  brooding  over  it.' 

R.  H.  HUTTON. 

X.  II.    O    Daniel,    thou    man   greatly 
beloved. 

'  A  ND   as   I   walked  towards  the  jail,  the 

word  of  the  Lord  came  to  me,  saying, 

"  My  love  was  always  to  thee,  and  thou  art 

in  My  love."     And  I  was  ravished  with  the 

E  65 


DANIEL  [chap.  x. 

sense  of  the  love  of  God,  and  greatly 
strengthened  in  my  inward  man.  But  when 
I  came  into  the  jail,  where  the  prisoners 
were,  a  great  power  of  darkness  struck  at  me, 
and  I  sat  still,  having  my  spirit  gathered  into 
the  love  of  God.'         Yoyi's  Journal^  1649. 

Stand  upright. 

*  T^O  you  know,  more  people  perish  from 
lack  of  proper  self-appreciation  than 
from  consumption.'  maxim  gorky. 

X.  12.  From  the  first  day  that  thou 
didst  set  thine  heart  to  understand, 
thy  words  were  heard. 

'  T  T  is  strange  to  say,  but  it  is  a  truth  which 

our    own   observation   and    experience 

will  confirm,  that  when  a   man  discerns  in 

himself  most  sin  and  humbles  himself  most, 

when  his  comeliness  seems  to  him  to  vanish 

66 


VER.  12]  DANIEL 

away  and  all  his  graces  to  wither,  when  he 
feels  disgust  at  himself,  and  revolts  at  the 
thought  of  himself — seems  to  himself  all  dust 
and  ashes,  all  foulness  and  odiousness,  then 
it  is  that  he  is  really  rising  in  the  kingdom 
of  God,  as  it  is  said  of  Daniel,  "  From  the 
first  day  that  thou  didst  set  thine  heart  to 
understand  and  to  chasten  thyself  before  thy 
God,  thy  words  were  heard,  and  I  am  come 
for  thy  words."' 

NEWMAN. 

See   Dora  Greenwell's   Covenant  of  Life^ 
PP-  134/. 

XI.  2/]  And  now  I  will  show  thee  the 
truth.  Behold,  there  shall  stand  up 
three  kings  in  Persia,  etc. 

*  "\  ^ /"HILE  philosophy  had  for  the  Jews  no 
meaning,  history  had  a  deeper  sig- 
nificance than  it  had  for  any  other  people. 

67 


DANIEL  [chap.  xi. 

It  was  the  chief  factor  in  their  national  unity, 
the  source  from  which  they  drew  ethical  and 
spiritual  enlightenment.  Thither  they  turned 
as  to  living  oracles  inscribed  with  the  finger 
of  the  Almighty.  To  history  they  appealed 
as  the  supreme  tribunal  of  God's  justice. 
The  great  monarchies,  Egypt,  Assyria,  Baby- 
lonia, Persia,  pass  across  the  scene.  Their 
fortunes  cross  and  interlock  into  those  of  the 
chosen  race.  Israel  is  the  pivot  on  which 
their  destiny  turns.  History,  in  a  word,  is 
the  drama  in  which  God  Himself  is  the  pro- 
tagonist, vindicating  His  justice  and  moral 
government  on  the  stage  of  the  visible 
world.' — BUTCHER,  Harvard  Lectures  on 
Greek  Subjects^  pp.  29-31. 


68 


VER.  27,  45]  DANIEL 

XI.    19.  But  he  shall  stumble  and  fall 
and  shall  not  be  found. 

*  /"^  OLD  and  iron  are  good 
To  buy  iron  and  gold  j 
All  earth's  fleece  and  food 
For  their  like  are  sold. 
Hinted  Merlin  wise, 
Proved  Napoleon  great.  .  .  . 
Fear,  Craft,  and  Avarice 

Cannot  rear  a  state.' 

Emerson. 

XI.   27,    45.    It  shall   not   prosper  .  .  . 
he  shall  come  to  his  end,  and  none 

shall  help  him. 

*  T IFE    and    more    life    unto   the    chosen, 
death 
To  all  things  living  that  would  stifle  them. 
So  speaks  each  god  that   makes  a   nation 

strong.'  GEORGE  ELIOT. 

69 


DANIEL  [chap.  xi. 

XI.    32.    He    shall    pervert    by    flat- 
teries. 

*  /^ROWS  pick  out  the  eyes  of  the  dead, 

when  the  dead  no  longer  need  their 
eyes.  But  flatterers  destroy  the  souls  of  the 
living,  and  blind  their  eyes.' 

EPICTETUS. 

Cf.  the  Flatterer  in  the  first  part  of  the 
Pilgrim! s  Progress. 

The  people  that  know  their  God  shall 
be  strong,  and  do  exploits. 

*  npHE  course  of  this  man's  hfe  had  been 

very  simple,  and  yet  crowded  with 
events  and  with  manifold  activity.  The 
element  of  his  energy  was  an  indestructible 
faith  in  God,  and  in  an  assistance  flowing 
immediately  from  him.' 

GOETHE,  upon  Jung  Stilling. 

70 


VER.  32]  DANIEL 

*  "D  UT  best  befriended  of  the  God 
He  who,  in  evil  times, 
Warned  by  an  inward  voice. 
Heeds  not  the  darkness  and  the  dread, 
Biding  by  his  rule  and  choice, 
Feeling  only  the  fiery  thread 
Leading  over  heroic  ground, 
Walled  with  mortal  terror  round, 
To  the  aim  which  him  allures, 
And  the  sweet  heaven  his  deed  secures  .  ,  , 
Stainless  soldier  on  the  walls. 
Knowing  this — and  knows  no  more — 
Whoever  fights,  whoever  falls, 
Justice  conquers  evermore, 
Justice  after  as  before — 
And  he  who  battles  on  her  side, 
God,  though  he  were  ten  times  slain, 
Crowns  him  victor  glorified, 
Victor  over  death  and  pain ; 
For  ever  j  but  his  erring  foe, 
71 


DANIEL  [chap.  xi. 

Self-assured  that  he  prevails, 
Looks  from  his  victim  lying  low, 
And  sees  aloft  the  red  right  arm 
Redress  the  eternal  scales. 
He,  the  poor  foe,  whom  angels  foil, 
Blind  with  pride  and  fooled  by  hate, 
Writhes  within  the  dragon  coil, 
Reserved  to  a  speechless  fate.' 

EMERSON. 

The  people  that  know  their  God  shall 
do  exploits. 

*  Tjr  E  found  his  work,  but  far  behind 

Lay    something    that   he   could   not 
find- 
Deep  springs  of  passion  that  can  make 
A  life  sublime  for  others'  sake. 
And  lend  to  work  the  living  glow 
That  saints  and  bards  and  heroes  know. 
72 


VER.  33]  DANIEL 

The  power  lay  there — unfolded  power — 

A  bud  that  never  bloomed  a  flower ; 

For  half-beliefs  and  jaded  moods 

Of  worldlings,  cynics,  critics,  prudes. 

Lay  round  his  path  and  dimmed  and  chilled/ 

W.  E.  H.  LECKY. 

XI.  ^;^,  They  shall  fall  by  the  sword 
and  by  flame,  by  captivity  and  by 
spoil,  many  days. 

'  TT  is  sometimes  argued  that  religious  con- 
victions are  not  as  strong  as  they  were 
in  old  times.'  But  'that  the  fervour  for 
truth  is  not  diminished  may  be  seen  in 
regions  outside  theology.  ...  At  this 
moment  hundreds  of  educated  men  are 
defying  the  whole  power  of  the  Russian 
empire  in  the  struggle  for  constitutional 
liberty.     Every  month  sees  a  score  or  more 

73 


DANIEL  [chap.  xi. 

of  them  consigned  to  a  hopeless  dungeon 
or  sent  to  Siberia,  and  the  ranks  close  up 
again  firmer  after  every  fresh  gap.  Some 
of  us  cannot  have  forgotten  how  a  crowd  of 
Poles,  men  and  women,  knelt  down  in  1861 
in  the  great  square  of  Warsaw,  praying  and 
singing  hymns,  as  fifteen  volleys  of  grape 
shot  tore  through  their  ranks.  The  sacrifice 
was  unavailing ;  but  it  is  by  sacrifice  of  this 
sort  that  national  character  is  regenerated, 
and  as  long  as  the  spirit  of  martyrdom  lives, 
there  seems  no  need  to  despair  of  the  future 
of  humanity.' 

C.  H.  PEARSON. 

XI.  35.  And  some    of  them    that    be 
wise  shall  fall. 

See  Browning's  poem,  '  A  Lost  Leader.' 


74 


VER.  35]  DANIEL 

Even  to  the  time  of  the  end. 

*  TN  Greek  authors  of  classical  times  there 

is    no   trace   of  the   thought   that  the 

human  race  as  a  whole,  or  any  single  people, 

is  advancing  towards  a  divinely  appointed 

goal ;  there  is  nothing  of  what  the  moderns 

mean  by  the  "  Education  of  the  World,"  "  the 

Progress  of  the  Race,"  the  "  Divine  guidance 

of  Nations."     The  first  germ  of  the  thought 

is  in  Polybius^  {circa  204-122   B.C.),   whose 

work  illustrates  the   idea  of  a  providential 

destiny  presiding  over  the  march  of  Roman 

history,  and  building  up  the  imperial  power 

of    Rome    for    the    good    of    mankind.' — 

butcher's    Aspects    of  the    Greek     Genius^ 

pp.  155-156. 

^  i.e.  a  contemporary  of  the  prophet  who  wrote  the  book 
of  Daniel  (J.  M.). 


75 


DANIEL  [chap.  xi. 

XI.  36/!  Neither  shall  he  regard  any 
God  :  for  he  shall  magnify  himself 
above  all. 

*  ZITHERS     may    occupy    themselves,    if 

they   will,   in   seeking   a   nostrum    to 

destroy  the  phylloxera;  be  it  mine  to  find 

one  that  shall  destroy  the  Christian  religion.' 

M.  PAUL  BERT. 

'  OAJVS  foy :  full  large  of  limbe  and  every 
joint 
He  was,  and  cared  not  for  God  or  man  a 

point.'  ^  SPENSER. 

'  /^~^AN  there  be  a  more  dreadful  delusion 
than  to  see  God  where  He  is  not,  or 
to  imagine  ourselves  more  enlightened  than 
Jesus  Christ  ? ' 

DR.  WILLIAM  BARRY. 
76 


VER.  43-45]  DANIEL 

XI.  43-45.  He  shall  have  power  over 
the  treasure  of  gold  and  of  silver.  .  .  . 
Yet  he  shall  come  to  his  end. 

*  T  CAN  never  forget  the  inexpressible  luxury 
and  prophanenesse,  gaming  and  all 
dissoluteness,  and  as  it  were  total  forgetfuU- 
nesse  of  God  (it  being  Sunday  evening) 
which  this  day  se'nnight  I  was  witness  of, 
the  king  sitting  and  toying  with  his  con- 
cubines, a  French  boy  singing  love  songs 
in  that  glorious  gallery,  whilst  about  twenty 
of  the  greate  courtiers  and  other  dissolute 
persons  were  at  Basset  round  a  large  table, 
a  bank  of  at  least  2000  in  gold  before  them, 
upon  which  two  gentlemen  who  were  with 
me  made  reflexions  with  astonishment.  Six 
days  after  was  all  in  the  dust ! ' 

Evelyn's  Diary ^  Feb.  1685. 


77 


DANIEL  [chap.  xii. 

XL  45.  Yet  he  shall  come  to  his  end, 
and  none  shall  help  him. 

*  /^UR  physical  organism  was  devised  for 

existence  in  the  atmosphere  of  our 
globe  and  so  is  our  moral  organism  devised 
for  existence  in  justice.  Every  faculty  craves 
for  it,  is  more  intimately  bound  up  with  it 
than  with  the  laws  of  gravitation,  light,  or 
heat;  and  to  plunge  into  injustice  is  to 
fling  ourselves  head  foremost  into  what  is 
hostile  and  unknown.' 

MAETERLINCK,  The  BuHed  Temple. 

XI J.  3.  And  they  that  be  wise  shall 
shine  as  the  brightness  of  the  firma- 
ment :  and  they  that  turn  many  to 
righteousness  as  the  stars  for  ever 
and  ever. 

*  T    DO   believe   the   station   of  a   popular 

preacher  is  one  of  the  greatest  trials  on 


VER.  3]  DANIEL 

earth  :  a  man  in  that  position  does  not  stop 
to  soberly  calculate  how  much,  or  rather 
how  little  is  done  when  there  appears  a 
great  effect,  nor  to  consider  how  immense 
is  the  difference  between  deeply  affecting 
the  feelings  and  permanently  changing  the 
heart.  The  preacher  who  causes  a  great 
sensation  and  excited  feelings  is  not  neces- 
sarily the  one  who  will  receive  the  reward  of 
shining  as  the  stars  for  ever  and  ever,  be- 
cause he  has  turned  many  to  righteousness.' 

F.  W.  ROBERTSON. 

XII.  3.  As  the  stars. 

*  A/ONDER  stars  are  rising.  Have  you 
ever  noticed  their  order,  heard  their 
ancient  names,  thought  of  what  they  were, 
as  teachers,  "lecturers,''  in  that  large  public 
hall  of  the  night,  to  the  wisest  men  of  old  ? 
Have  you  ever  thought  of  the  direct  promise 

79 


DANIEL  [chap.  xii. 

to  you  yourselves,  that  you  may  be  like 
them  if  you  will?  "They  that  be  wise 
shall  shine  as  the  brightness  of  the  firma- 
ment ;  and  they  that  turn  many  to  righteous- 
ness, as  the  stars,  for  ever  and  ever."  They 
that  be  wise.  Don't  think  that  means 
knowing  how  big  the  moon  is.  It  means 
knowing  what  you  ought  to  do,  as  man  or 
woman  ;  what  your  duty  to  your  father  is, 
to  your  child,  to  your  neighbour,  to  nations 
your  neighbours.' 

RUSKIN,  Fors  Clavigera,  Ixxv. 

'  T  LIKE  to  associate  my  friends  with  parti- 
cular stars,  there  is  something  so  sweet 
and  intimate  and  confidential  in  a  star.  The 
sun  and  the  moon,  but  especially  the  sun, 
are  too  universal  and  general  for  particular 
friendship;  but  you  may  consider  a  star 
as  your  own.' 

ERSKINE  OF  LINLATHEN. 
80 


VER.  3]  DANIEL 

'  T  OOK,  what  a  company  of  constellations  ! 

Say  can  the  sky  so  many  lights  contain  ? 
Hath  the  great  earth  these  endless  genera 
tions  ? 
Are  there  so  many  purified  by  pain  ? 

These  thro'  all  glow  and  eminence  of  glory 
Cry  for  a  brighter,  who  delayeth  long ; 

Star  unto  star  the  everlasting  story 

Pours  in  a  splendour,  flashes  in  a  song.' 

F.  W.  H.  MYERS. 

T_T  EINE,  in  his  Confessions^  tells  of  an  in- 
terview he  once  had  with  Hegel.  After 
supper  the  poet,  looking  out  of  the  window, 
began  to  speak  sentimentally  of  the  stars  as 
the  dwelling-place  of  the  blessed.  Hegel 
muttered,  '  Hum !  hum !  The  stars  are 
simply  a  brilliant  leprosy  on  the  face  of 
heaven.'  '  In  God's  name,'  cried  the  poet, 
'is  there  then  no  happy  place  above  where 

F  81 


DANIEL  [chap.  xii. 

the  virtuous  may  find  reward  after  death?' 
Whereupon  Hegel  rejoined,  '  So  you  think 
you  deserve  a  pourboire  for  tending  your  sick 
mother,  or  for  not  poisoning  your  elder 
brother ! ' 

They  that  turn  many  to  righteousness. 

*  'T^ AKE  as  many  to  heaven  with  you  as  ye 

are  able  to  draw.     The  more  ye  draw 
with  you,  ye  shall  be  the  welcomer  yourself.' 

S.  RUTHERFORD. 

XII.  4.  Many  shall  run  to  and  fro,  and 
knowledge  shall  be  increased. 

*  TT  is  written.  Many  shall  run  to  and  fro  ^ 

arid  knowledge  shall  be  increased.     Surely 
the  plain  rule  is.  Let  each  considerate  person 
have  his  way,  and  see  what  it  will  lead  to. 
82 


VER.  4]  DANIEL 

For  not  this  man  and  that  man,  but  all  men 
make  up  mankind,  and  their  united  tastes 
the  taste  of  mankind.  How  often  have  we 
seen  some  such  adventurous  and  perhaps 
much  censured  wanderer  light  on  some  out- 
lying, neglected,  yet  vitally  momentous  pro- 
vince; the  hidden  treasures  of  which  he 
first  discovered,  and  left  proclaiming  till  the 
general  eye  and  effort  were  directed  thither, 
and  the  conquest  was  completed.  Wise  was 
he  who  counselled  that  speculation  should 
have  free  course,  and  look  fearlessly  toward 
all  the  thirty-two  points  of  the  compass, 
whithersoever  and  howsoever  it  listed.' 

Sartor  Resartus^  book  I.  i. 

*  nPHE  art  of  printing  appears  to  have  been 

providentially  reserved  till  these  latter 

ages,  and  then   providentially  brought  into 

use,  as  what  was  to  be  instrumental  for  the 

83 


DANIEL  [chap.  xii. 

future  in  carrying  on  the  appointed  course  of 
things.  The  alterations  which  this  art  has 
already  made  in  the  face  of  the  world  are  not 
inconsiderable.  By  means  of  it,  whether 
immediately  or  remotely,  the  methods  of 
carrying  on  business  are  in  several  respects 
improved,  knowledge  has  been  increased^  and 
some  sort  of  literature  is  become  general.' 

BUTLER. 

XII.  4,  9.  Shut  up  the  words  and  seal 
the  book  .  .  .  till  the  time  of  the 
end. 

*  A/TY  book  will  await  its  reader;  has  not 
God  waited  six  thousand  years  before 
He  has  created  a  man  to  contemplate  His 
works  ? ' 

KEPLER. 

84 


VER.  lo]  DANIEL 

XII.  lo.  They  that  be  wise. 

•  ^  OD  will  not  judge   men   by  what  they 

know;  yet  to  have  used  knowledge 
rightly  will  be  a  staff  to  support  and  comfort 
us  in  passing  through  the  dark  valley.' 

JOWETT. 

But  the  wicked  shall  do  wickedly. 

*  1 1  rHERE,  if  not  in  Christ,  is  the  power 

that  can  persuade  a  sinner  to  return, 
that  can  bring  /lome  a  heart  to  God}  Common 
mercies  of  God,  though  they  have  a  leading 
faculty  to  repentance,  yet  the  rebellious  heart 
will  not  be  led  by  them.  The  judgments 
of  God,  public  or  personal,  though  they 
ought  to  drive  us  to  God,  yet  the  heart  un- 
changed runs  the  further  from  God.  Leave 
Christ  out,  I  say,  and  all  other  means  work 
not   this   way;    neither  the   works   nor  the 

F2  85 


DANIEL  [chap.  xii. 

word  of  God  sounding  daily  in  his  ear, 
Return^  reticr?i.  Let  the  noise  of  the  rod 
speak  it  too,  and  both  join  together  to  make 
the  cry  louder,  yet  the  wicked  will  do  wickedly.^ 

LEIGHTON. 

XII.  13.  For  thou  shalt  rest,  and  stand 
in  thy  lot  at  the  end  of  the  days. 

*  "XJATURE  in  her  grave  nobleness  is  not 
less,  but  more  dear  now,  when  I 
remember  that  I  shall  soon  bid  her  good 
even,  to  enter  into  the  presence  of  her  Lord 
and  mine.  New  heavens  and  a  new  earth — 
I  cannot  sever  my  human  heart  from  mine 
own  land ;  and  who  shall  say  that  those  noble 
countries,  casting  off  all  impurity  in  the  fiery 
trial  that  awaits  them,  shall  not  be  our  final 
heaven  ? 

'  I  love  to  think  that  it  may  be  so  ;  I  love 
86 


VER.  13]  DANIEL 

to  think  that  the  Lord,  in  His  humanity, 
looks  tenderly  upon  the  mortal  soil  on  which 
He  sojourned  in  His  wondrous  life,  and  that 
here,  perchance,  in  these  very  lands,  made 
holy  by  His  grace  and  power,  our  final  rest 
shall  be.  It  may  be  but  a  fancy;  but  it 
comes  upon  me  with  gentle  might,  like  the 
whispered  comfort  of  an  angel.  A  new 
earth,  wherein  dwelleth  righteousness — a 
glorified  humanity  which,  remaining  human, 
is  mortal  no  longer !  with  the  judgment  and 
the  condemnation  and  the  wars  of  the  Lord 
overpast,  and  the  earth  and  the  heaven  one 
fair  broad  country,  and  Himself  over  all, 
blessed  for  ever  !  These  are  the  old  man's 
dreams  j  and  they  shed  new  glory  over  the 
pleasant  places  in  which  my  lines  have 
fallen.' — From  Adam  Graeme  of  Mossgray, 

by  MRS.  OLIPHANT. 


87 


DANIEL  [chap,  xu 

*  OPARE  no  deceit.  Lay  the  sword  upon 
it ;  go  over  it :  keep  yourselves  clear  of 
the  blood  of  all  men,  either  by  word  or 
writing ;  and  keep  yourselves  clean,  that  you 
may  stand  in  your  throne,  and  every  one  have 
his  lot,  and  stand  in  the  lot  in  the  Ancient 
of  Days.' 

fox's  Address  to  the  Quakers^  1656. 

Thou  shalt  rest. 

'  |I)  ROTHER,  we  do  not  lay  you  down  so 
deep 
But  we  ourselves  shall  overtake  you  soon : 
We  dream  a  little  longer,  while  you  sleep ; 
And  sleep  than  dreaming,  yours  the  better 
boon. 

Who   sleeps   not   and   is  thankful  when  he 
can? 
In  dreaming  there  is  little  rest,  be  still. 
88 


VER.  13]  DANIEL 

We  are  but  oxen  of  the  Husbandman, 

In  his  good  time  we  sow  what  seed  he 
will. 

Till   Earth  put   out  her  dead-like  buds  in 
spring, 
'Twere  well    to    sleep   the   whole    black 
winter  through. 
Sweetly  the  cool  earth  round  your  ears  shall 
cling; 
We  turn  to  dreams  again ;  sleep  soundly, 
you.' 

PROF.  J.  S.  PHILLIMORE. 

Thou  shalt  stand  in  thy  lot. 

*  JESUS,  that  Flower  of  Jesse  set  without 

hands,  getteth   many  a  blast,  and   yet 

withers  not,  because  He  is  His  Father's  noble 

Rose,  casting  a  sweet  smell  through  heaven 

and  earth,  and  must  grow ;  and  in  the  same 

89 


DANIEL  [chap.  xii. 

garden  grow  the  saints,  God's  fair  and  beau- 
tiful lilies,  under  wind  and  rain,  and  all  sun- 
burned, and  yet  life  remaineth  at  the  root. 
Keep  within  His  garden,  and  you  shall  grow 
with  them,  till  the  great  Husbandman,  qui 
dear  Master  Gardener,  come  and  transplant 
you  from  the  lower  part  of  His  vineyard  up 
to  the  higher,  to  the  very  heart  of  His  garden, 
above  the  wrongs  of  the  rain,  sun,  and  wind.' 

SAMUEL   RUTHERFORD. 


Printed  by  T.  and  A,  Constable,  Printers  to  His  Majesty 
at  the  Edinburgh  University  Press 


LITERARY    ILLUSTRATIONS 
OF    THE    BIBLE 

EDITED  BY  THE  REV. 

JAMES   MOFFATT,   D.D. 

Vol.  I.   The  Book  of  Ecclesiastes. 
Vol.  II.   The  Book  of  Daniel. 
Vol.  III.   The  Gospel  of  St.  Mark. 
Vol.  IV.   The  Gospel  of  St.  Luke. 
Vol.  V.   The  Epistle  to  the  Romans. 
Vol.  VI.    The  Book  of  Revelation. 

The  materials  employed  in  compiling  these  volumes 
are  of  two  kinds.  On  the  one  hand  have  been  set 
down  passages  of  verse  and  prose  in  which  some 
text  has  been  used  or  applied  in  a  forcible  or 
notable  manner.  Some  of  these  are  drawn  from 
history  and  biography,  others  from  general  litera- 
ture. In  the  second  place,  the  author  has  admitted 
passages  which  develop  aptly  and  freshly  not  the 
words  but  the  idea  of  a  Biblical  verse,  and  it  is  hoped 
that  both  classes  of  illustrations  may  prove  interest- 
ing and  valuable  to  the  ordinary  reader  as  well  as  to 
the  preacher  and  teacher  by  enriching  the  associa- 
tions and  eliciting  the  significance  of  the  Bible. 

LONDON:   HODDER  AND  STOUGHTON 
27  PATERNOSTER  ROW 


JJate  Due 


BS1555.M695 
The  book  of  Daniel. 

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